The Foundations of Japan | Page 2

had been found for men over military
age--Mr. Wells's protest will be remembered--it occurred to me that it
might be serviceable if I could have ready, for the period of rural
reconstruction and readjustment of our international ideas when the
War was over, two books of a new sort. One should be a stimulating
volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than technically
agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming system and rural life, and
the other a complementary American volume based on a study of the
enterprising large farming of the Middle West. I proposed to write the
second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer who had
often invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father of the present
American Minister of Agriculture. Early in 1915 I set out for Japan to
enter upon the first part of my task. Mr. Wallace died while I was still
in Japan, and the Middle West book remains to be undertaken by
someone else.
The Land of the Rising Sun has been fortunate in the quality of the
books which many foreigners have written.[3] But for every work at
the standard of what might be called the seven "M's"--Mitford,
Murdoch, Munro, Morse, Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern--there
are many volumes of fervid "pro-Japanese" or determined
"anti-Japanese" romanticism. The pictures of Japan which such easily
perused books present are incredible to readers of ordinary insight or
historical imagination, but they have had their part in forming public
opinion.
The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country. Japanese
æstheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the smoking
chimneys of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the Parliamentary
and administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly worldwide
diplomacy are all borne on the bent backs of _Ohyakusho no Fufu_,[4]
the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The depositories of the
authentic Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit) are to be found knee deep
in the sludge of their paddy fields.
One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the

village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath that
surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to discover
the foundations of the Japan which is intent on cutting such a figure in
the East and in the West. There it is possible to learn not only what
Japan is but what she may have it in her to become.
A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of
agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young
and Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone
of a healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close
acquaintance with the rural civilisation of two pre-eminently
small-holdings countries, Holland and Denmark, but by what I knew to
be precious in the rural life of my own land.
An interest in rural problems cannot be simulated. As I journeyed about
the country the sincerity of my purpose--there are few words in
commoner use in the Far East than sincerity--was recognised and
appreciated. I enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had
been broken down and those who spoke said what they felt. We
inevitably discussed not only agricultural economy but life, religion
and morality, and the way Japan was taking.
I spoke and slept in Buddhist temples. I was received at Shinto shrines.
I was led before domestic altars. I was taken to gatherings of native
Christians. I planted commemorative trees until more persimmons than
I can ever gather await my return to Japan. I wrote so many _gaku_[5]
for school walls and for my kind hosts that my memory was drained of
maxims. I attended guileless horse-races. I was present at agricultural
shows, fairs, wrestling matches, Bon dances, village and county
councils and the strangest of public meetings. I talked not only with
farmers and their families but with all kinds of landlords, with
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, policemen, shopkeepers, priests,
co-operative society enthusiasts, village officials, county officials,
prefectural officials, a score of Governors and an Ainu chief. I sought
wisdom from Ministers of State and nobles of every rank, from the
Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to democratic
Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers' wives and
daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a
memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and
bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation

of Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories
and classrooms, and, in a remote region, beheld what is rare nowadays,
the old countryman kneeling before his cottage with his head to the
ground as the stranger rode past.
I